Gardening: Hints and Help!

Pinch the growing tips off and the sweet peas will grow stronger and produce side shoots.

Thanks, Right I will try that Impy

Good tip, about pinching them out. I’d also try to keep them fairly cool, somewhere with plenty of light 👍

Just a word of caution for fellow gardeners. Last year I applied liberal amounts of bagged, composted manure to my raised (veg) beds. In time, I then planted them up, as normal. After a while, it became apparent that something wasn’t right. My broad beans took on a whippy/distorted appearance, and I ended up having to pull them up. After some googling, I happened on something called Aminopyralid (I can’t remember the brand names). It’s the ingredient used in some weed killers, and as I understand it, is used by some farmers in their fields. This then finds its way into manure, some of which ends up on our gardens. There’s plenty of info online (just key in Aminopyralid contamination), but my message is don’t take bagged manure for granted. I would recommend carrying out a bean test, whereby you plant some beans into a mix of 50/50 manure and compost. Once they’re up, it should soon become apparent if there’s a problem. Just remembered this, a good video herewith that explains it.

That’s an interesting clip Freddy. More from the horse feed end for me. We were lucky in that farm where we kept our horse were very interested in land management, so hay fields contained a mix of good plants, the only thing eradicated was Ragwort, and any of this was dealt with by a tooled up “ragwort gang” rather than chemicals. I still detest seeing ragwort growing anywhere!

Thanks for sharing, hope things go better this year.

“Thanks for sharing, hope things go better this year.”

Lesson learned for me. It’s a very persistent weedkiller, apparently (up to 2 years). To save waiting that long, the only cure is to dig the ground over several times before planting again. I understand it’s also been found in ‘enriched’ (bagged) compost. 

If you can find a livery yard/stables that has horses bedded on peat, the manure will be brilliant😁 It’s not used extensively nowadays, mainly because of costs, and environmental issues, but it helps some horses that have breathing issues on other types of bedding. Rare indeed. We tried our horse on a mix of peat and shavings, made a lovely bed, but it cost us a fortune, and he was sound winded, so we went back to dust free shavings. The shavings manure has to be very well rotted though, otherwise the urea content just burns the plants. Who said the science of poo management was boring......🤣

I was disappointed to miss out on some pots of Snakeshead Fritillaries the other day at Waitrose, they were post checkouts on way out😡 Result today though, popped into our Morrison’s, big pots for £2.50 each, twice size of those at Waitrose for £5 each🤩 So I bought two😂

Edit, back to your beds Freddy. If you have established woodland not far away, why not dig for leaf mould? Very rich, my Grandad was a very keel gardener of both veg and flowers, won lots of prizes. As a child, I can recall the annual trip into woods for leafmould with Pop, Dad and Uncles. Not sure if it’s legal nowadays though😉

“Edit, back to your beds Freddy. If you have established woodland not far away, why not dig for leaf mould? Very rich, my Grandad was a very keel gardener of both veg and flowers, won lots of prizes. As a child, I can recall the annual trip into woods for leafmould with Pop, Dad and Uncles. Not sure if it’s legal nowadays though😉“

I have, as it happens, stocked up on some Levingington composted (bagged) manure, once I’d established it was ok. I should have enough to last a few years 🙂

Edit : I quite like the idea of leaf mould. The only problem is having somewhere to store it while it rots down. I also seem to recall that not all leaves are suitable? I don’t know.

Think Spring is nearly here, the Hostas are now starting to move. Some garden plants also, its been very cold the last few months .so now hope for some sun.

Indeed HH, I am looking at my hosta’s bought last year. No signs yet, but it’s cool at night here still. We have lots of bulbs out now, so much more colour here.